As my wife knows, about the only religion I subscribe to is the restorative power of standing in a river. Preferably one with wild trout in it that are looking up on that particular day. I got to worship at the altar of a new, relatively undiscovered freestone creek last weekend on a nearly-perfect Dad’s Day orchestrated by my loving (and understanding) bride and my best friend. When I returned home on the crack-of-dawn flight yesterday, I was greeted at the door by an enthusiastic 4-year-old who had drawn a Father’s Day card for me by hand the prior day. Reproduced below, she explained it was a picture of “Daddy fishing in a river. With snails in the water. And hearts all around.” Awesome.
And now, purely for posterity, an account of my Dad’s Day outing. [Sneaky caveat: river names were redacted from the original email, in case there are any particularly sleuthy flyfisherman trolling the interwebs for tips on secret fishing spots east of Spokane… I’m not quite ready to give up the coordinates on this place yet, for fear that the next time I get out to fish it again it would ever-so-slightly increase the likelihood that we’d see another human out there. I don’t know if it really matters, but I’d like to think that being a wee-bit paranoid is what keeps the wild fish in places like this in the river, where they’re supposed to stay, imho.]
“ralph and i had a little one day adventure last sunday for dad’s day that proved to me that cutthroats can be: big enough, aggressive, and fighters. and it taught me not to discount the small water.
we went to this incredible freestone creek that’s a tributary in northern idaho of the ____________ called ___________ .
(mandy had generously pre-cleared the one-day getaway for me out to spokane to enable it – genius.)
anyway it was unbelievable – ralph has fished the lower 3 miles or so up a few times, but we google mapped it further up and saw (via satellite – aint technology cool?) what looked like from the space-station-close-up a 1.5 mile meadow of braided channels and lots of switchbacks with potential holes and cut banks that started about 3.5-4 miles up the river from the trailhead. he had never fished it, never seen it, and only heard from a couple of folks that it was accessible. i flew into spokane at 8, we hightailed the 2 hour drive to the trailhead, and packed big packs with all the gear and food for the day. took us over an hour from the trailhead to hike a forest trail to where it crossed the river at a huge bend that looked on the satellite map like it might be near the start of the meadow we were targetting. it was land of the lost – deep deep in the woods, never saw another person, ralph had this massive handgun on his belt called “the judge” that takes .410 slug shells that he carries for moose and bear. that made me nervous until i started seeing huge moose hoof prints fresh in the muddy trail and along the riverbanks all day. around mile 2 on the hike i started seeing the river/creek and could tell it was going to be on. at 11 in the morning the PMD’s were already coming off thick, we could see occassional little risers in the slicks, and even though it was supposed to rain in the afternoon the cloud cover was perfect, there was hardly any wind, and temps were low 60′s.
we dropped the packs under a pine tree, suited up, strung up our matching green Biix 4-weights, and ate lunch while we watched what looked like some big boys going on top in the troubled water 10 feet below us.
two cold beers later, with two more in my daypack for an afternoon libation, we wet waded in quick-dries and wading boots into the creek. maybe 20 feet wide, no deeper than knee high except in the deep holes where it got to probably 5 feet to maybe 8-10 in some places. reminded me of a freestone Ruby.
We had one rod rigged with a 14 PMD that matched the hatch, the other with a chubby chernobyl b/c we thought the golden stones might have made their way up that far. turned out they hadn’t, but no worries, because once in the river we started seeing a few massive green drakes drying off in the tailout. yummy.
Ralph let me have first throw. second cast with the PMD, whacked the largest cutt i’ve ever caught in the middle of the tailout. big fight, plenty of wild genes digging for the deepest part of the hole. when we landed him, it was the craziest looking wildest fish ever – dark spots like a bow, yellow belly of a cutt, but a bright pink line that started at its gills and ran the entire length of the 18-19 inches down to its adipose. it was more of a cut-belly than a cutthroat. (ralph has a pic but has been too lazy to upload it yet, so i’ll have to send that later…). Next couple casts i whacked another smaller guy on the PMD. Ralph switched to a big green drake and took one or two of the remainders out of the troubled water at the top of the hole.
1/4 mile of walking upstream later we’d traded off first-casts and smacked 3 or 4 more out of the runs we found, and we got to the start of the most gorgeous mile long stretch of switchbacks and cut-banks running through a big open scrub-brush and wild grasses meadow you’ve ever seen.
For the next 5 hours we worked our way from the bottom to the top of each switchback fast-water tailout catching rollers on upstream casts with dry flies. every hole or cut-bank had at least 2 in it, some had 3 or 4, with at least one in each promising hole being in the 15/16 class and garden-variety average being 12-14. PMD’s all day, occassional drakes, a few yellow sallies, and by afternoon still no rain but these big cahill PED’s started going and they started keying on those. ralph even got a few to roll under the overhang brush and cutbanks on the chubby.
I can’t count how many we caught, but it was steady all day and it was at least 20 hookups each, although we started LDR’ing the ones under 10-12 by midafternoon.
In one cutbank, there was a truly special guy that i stung on the way up but missed. In another hole there was a 16 that went for my fly on 4 successive casts, i missed the set on 4 straight drifts, and on #5 he went again and i finally stuck and landed him. Dumb, but still fought like a bow until i got him on the bank rocks, which was how almost all of them were, even the 12-14′s.
Once we got a 1/4 mile or so past the top of the long meadow, we turned around and spent a couple more hours working our way back down river to the packs and hitting all the good runs and holes again. some of them stayed spooked, but as we got closer to the starting point we started whacking them (same ones?) again in all the same spots. At the big cut bank i AGAIN had a shot on a looong upstream cast at the big guy and missed the set. Only bummer of the day.
Back to the packs by about 6, and then we walked the remaining 3 miles or so back to the trailhead in the river this time and hit about 4 or 5 more holes and runs that Ralph has fished before, trading off on first throw and taking at least one good fish from all of them.
At the last cutbank run under some overhang just before the trailhead, i broke down my rod and sat down with tired arms while ralph smacked two more good rollers on 10-foot drifts right next to the bank. The first drip-drops of rain shower hit the windshield 15 minutes later as we loaded back into the rig and had our last beers on the bumper.
It was like we were fly fishing in virgin water 100 years ago, and it’s probably true that some or most of those fish had never seen an artificial or had metal in their lip before.
on the drive back we passed another tributary about 10 miles away called ___________ that wanders through another giant grassy meadow that looked amazing also (but which ralph said gets a little fisherman pressure from Cd’A daytrippers).
It was just flat out awesome. hope you enjoyed reading the fishing report as much as i just enjoyed procrastinating work a little by writing it :-).”
